RARE BREEDS TRUST OF AUSTRALIA
powered by TidyHQSheep : Dorset Horn
Sheep : Dorset Horn
Country of origin 
England. Dorset in County of Devon
Australian Status
Uses
Meat, Short wool
Breed traits
The Dorset Horn is a good looking white faced breed with face free of wool. As their name implies, they are a horned sheep. The rams have handsome curled horns which grow to an impressive size. Care must be taken in breeding and husbandry to ensure that the horns never restrict vision. The ewes also have horns, but far smaller and more delicate. The legs are woolled to the knees and hocks.
Dorset Horns have a big robust frame, that is muscular, and ideal for carcass production. The wool is short and dense.
Their capacity to breed at any time of year made them popular for raising "house lambs" - lambs raised indoors and hand fed a rich diet, then sold to the early prime lamb market in spring. They have a good fertility rare and mature early. Early lambing means they are a popular prime lamb producer. Kept a little longer, they get heavier and weigh out as very big lambs and hefty hoggets.
Adaptable to a wide range of climate, they are a hardy breed. They remain a good first cross ram to get prime lambs from wool breeds, valuable as a genetic resource for the polled version of the breed. The ability to breed and conceive at any time of year is still a feature of the Dorset Horn. Wool is the fine downs type, of about 27 - 33 microns, staple about 3 to 4 inches and they cut about a 3 kilo fleece without kemp.
Great eating they put on good condition on basic pasture but a bit of time on crops too, such as canola, or other supplementary feed, makes them top weight on the scales.
History
The Dorset Down is one of the oldest British breeds. Like the extinct Pink-nosed Somerset, to which it is related, it probably derived from cross-breeding of Merinos imported from Spain with local tan-faced sheep similar to the modern Portland. Unlike many British lowland breeds, Dorset sheep were not influenced by cross-breeding with the Leicester or Southdown breeds which were much used for this purpose in the latter eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. A breeders' society, the Dorset Horn Sheep Breeders' Association, was set up in 1891 and the first flock book was published in the following year.
History in Australia
The Dorset Horn arrived in Australia in 1895. W.J. Dawkins of South Australia improved the breed in the early twentieth century, adding muscle and stockiness, and exported rams back to England. He also aimed at eliminating the horns. The Dorset Horn was immensely popular in England and Australia, being Australia's major prime lamb producer at one point. These days the polled Dorset breed, carefully developed from the Dorset Horn in Australia, has taken over in popularity.
Breed organisation
The Australian Dorset Horn Breeders Association https://www.assba.com.au/members/members_listing.asp?Breeds=DORSET%20HORN
Australian population
2018 Ewes 614 Rams 30
2022 Ewes 342 Rams 32
